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Comment by jonas21 | Hacker News Reader

In other words, Sony isn't charging more (in dollars). Your euro/pound/yen is just worth less than it was a year ago.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/EUR-USD?comparison=JPY-...

Going by the current EUR/USD price, from your link, they are charging more. They're overcharging by about $33. To make the Euro price be on par with the USD price, they would have to charge 515 euro, not 550.

EU prices include VAT, US prices do not include sales tax.

This is a fact that hasn't changed since the launch of the PS5, so your point is nonsense.

Earlier poster has a very good point, and I'll add to it: Demand, years in, outstrips supply. The most sensible thing for ANY company to do is to increase the MSRP. In a supply constricted world, this slightly improves availability while improving the margins for Sony.

Don't get me wrong, I hate capitalism with a burning passion, and the names I want to call Sony are...inappropriate. However, they are playing by the 'rules' of capitalism.

So, e.g. Germany has 19% VAT on most things.

550/1.19=462.19

462.19EUR=450.82USD

And they would also include extra cost for things like mandatory warranty and service requirements in some EU countries that do not exist in the US.

What is the all-inclusive-with-tax cost to the customer of a PS5 in USD? I guess that would be a fairer comparison: actual cost to customer.

Tax varies widely in the US down to a very local level.

Sales tax is likely between 0% and 13.5% for a PS5, but there may be localities with higher rates for electronics.

It's a mess: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_St...

Thanks

partly because of difficulties of unified policy, partly because of energy crisis, and partly becayse braindead ECB policy it's likely the euro continues to fall. so sony is probably baking this in now.

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